"Trade data is usually volatile around this time of year, with the Chinese New Year seasonal effect, so we should not be paying too much attention to monthly data for a while," he added.

According to Richard Martin, managing director of IMA Asia, the current global recovery isn't "normal" and investors shouldn't expect all of Asia's export engine to fire up in a regular fashion.

"Traditionally, when the west recovers, [China] exports will get a lift from strong consumer driven recovery in the Europe and United States. But that's not the case now. European consumers are still deleveraging, there's a bit of shyness still there in the US consumers, so that means you don't get a big factory run up," Martin told CNBC.

"So I'm fine with where that export number was for china and I think we'll just see it modestly lift through the first half of this year. Second half of this year, it should accelerate," he added.

There have been concerns about the outlook of China's economy, which is expected to record in 2013 its weakest growth since 1999.